A Ukrainian man told CNN’s Clarissa Ward that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “much worse” than Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, adding that he did not believe the Russian military advance would stop with Ukraine.
Ward, reporting from a train station in Kyiv, Ukraine, spoke to several men who were saying goodbye to their wives, children, and other relatives — putting them on trains in the hopes of getting them out of harm’s way. One of the men she spoke to, a man named Yuri, warned her that what the world was seeing happen to Ukraine might spill over into Europe in the coming months.
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JUST NOW: "Putin is worse than Hitler."
–enraged Ukrainian men at the train station in Kyiv, talking to @clarissaward as they watch their wives and children leave the city.pic.twitter.com/Fba8YVdnUN
— John Berman (@JohnBerman) March 7, 2022
“It’s just awful to see the fear in people’s eyes. They are just frantically trying to get their loved ones out. We have seen a lot of families saying good-bye to each other” Ward said. “They just don’t know where they are going to go. They don’t know where they are going to sleep. They don’t know when they’re going to be able to come back.”
Ward went to speak to several of the men at the train station, most of whom were there to see their loved ones leave the city, and Yuri stopped to give her a stark warning of what he believed was coming if Putin was not stopped: “What you see here —What you can see here, it’s very, very possible you’ll see that in a couple of months in Europe. Believe me.”
“The only way to stop murder is another murder,” Yuri continued.
“So you can hear it from him,” Ward turned back to the camera. “This man warning people that what happens in Ukraine will not stop in Ukraine. That this war will spill over into Europe.”
“No, no, never. Never,” Yuri interrupted, comparing Putin to Hitler and arguing that, like the Nazi dictator, Putin would not stop his military advances until he was forced to do so. “Hitler wasn’t stopped at West Germany, wasn’t stopped in Austria, wasn’t stopped in Czechoslovakia, wasn’t stopped in Poland. He only — the only way — the only point when we stop it is in bunker, and self-killed.”
“Do you think President Putin is like Hitler?” Ward asked, and Yuri did not hesitate to answer.
“Is much worse,” he said. “Because — because Hitler, even he was an idiot. Even he was an idiot. He did it, in his mind, he did it for German people. Putin do it only doing only for himself. For power. For self-power.”
Yuri went on to tell Ward that he had just put his wife and his 87-year-old mother on the train, adding that he was staying behind because he — along with all other men between the ages of 18 and 60 — is bound by law not to leave Ukraine.
“I can’t leave my country,” he said.